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Is Combining Contextual and Behavioral Targeting Strategies Effective in Online Advertising?

Published: 26 February 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Online targeting has been increasingly used to deliver ads to consumers. But discovering how to target the most valuable web visitors and generate a high response rate is still a challenge for advertising intermediaries and advertisers. The purpose of this study is to examine how behavioral targeting (BT) impacts users’ responses to online ads and particularly whether BT works better in combination with contextual targeting (CT). Using a large, individual-level clickstream data set of an automobile advertising campaign from an Internet advertising intermediary, this study examines the impact of BT and CT strategies on users’ click behavior. The results show that (1) targeting a user with behavioral characteristics that are closely related to ads does not necessarily increase the click through rates (CTRs); whereas, targeting a user with behavioral characteristics that are loosely related to ads leads to a higher CTR, and (2) BT and CT work better in combination. Our study contributes to online advertising design literature and provides important managerial implications for advertising intermediaries and advertisers on targeting individual users.

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems
    ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems  Volume 7, Issue 1
    March 2016
    61 pages
    ISSN:2158-656X
    EISSN:2158-6578
    DOI:10.1145/2897823
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 26 February 2016
    Accepted: 01 December 2015
    Revised: 01 October 2015
    Received: 01 October 2014
    Published in TMIS Volume 7, Issue 1

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    Author Tags

    1. Targeted advertising
    2. behavioral targeting
    3. contextual targeting
    4. online advertising

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    • (2023)The Early Impact of GDPR Compliance on Display Advertising: The Case of an Ad PublisherJournal of Marketing Research10.1177/0022243723117184861:1(70-91)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2023
    • (2023)Competitive peer influence on knowledge contribution behaviors in online Q&A communities: a social comparison perspectiveInternet Research10.1108/INTR-07-2022-0510Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
    • (2022)Revisiting TAM2 in behavioral targeting advertising: A deep learning-based dual-stage SEM-ANN analysisTechnological Forecasting and Social Change10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121345175(121345)Online publication date: Mar-2022
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    • (2020)User Interaction with Online AdvertisementsACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems10.1145/33771445:2(1-26)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2020
    • (2019)Online behavioral advertising: An integrative reviewJournal of Marketing Communications10.1080/13527266.2019.163066427:1(93-114)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2019
    • (2019)Enhancing geotargeting with temporal targeting, behavioral targeting and promotion for comprehensive contextual targetingDecision Support Systems10.1016/j.dss.2018.12.004117(28-37)Online publication date: Mar-2019
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